An autobiographical glimpse of Paolo Sorrentino in his Naples in the 80s, at the time of the myth of Maradona. This is the story told by the Neapolitan director in his latest work "It was the hand of God” which alludes to two important moments of his youth linked together: the fate that saved him from the tragedy that struck his two parents and the passion for the great Argentine footballer who also made history for that goal against England in the World Cup of Football of 1986.
Sorrentino is certainly one of the best Italian directors around and he too belongs to that group of those who have an educated hand and eye with the camera. The film begins with a very long sequence shot which from above shows a panoramic view of Naples seen from the sea and with these images he immediately puts his "trademark" on us, as has already partly happened with the award-winning The great beauty and the imaginative views of Rome. From that moment on, the main threads of his story are revealed three great tributes: to his family, his city and the cinema. His parents, family friends, relatives and acquaintances are a phenomenal reservoir of humanity multifaceted and multifaceted that is only apparently "Neapolitan" for how it would like to be represented perhaps in an excessively caricatured, mannered way, with a pinch of De Filippo and another of Totò, while substantially universal, or rather, all Italian with the its vices and virtues, with its comedies and tragedies.
The story focuses on the adolescence years of Fabietto (name of the young protagonist) in the before and after that precedes and follows the tragedy that struck his parents. In these two moments we read his future in the world of cinema which cannot be in Naples but in Rome where he will go to try to "tell a story" as the character/director Capuano tells him in one of the final scenes perhaps the most intense and suggestive .
From the family photo album, where the fundamental characters of its history appear (represented on stage by an excellent cast including the ever-present Toni Servillo, still beautiful Luisa Ranieri and the good rookie Filippo scotti) we pass quickly to the second level: the city on the slopes of Vesuvius in full football frenzy, awaiting the arrival of the Argentine champion. It is a well-to-do, cultured, rich and precious, superstitious and mischievous city, aristocratic and bourgeois as soon as it is painted with a romantic trait painted with the figure of the cigarette smuggler who dreams of an offshore motorboat that says "sciuff ..sciuff .." and goes to take a night trip to Capri, on the famous square. All well away from the "neighborhoods" and the suburbs and very close to the Chiaia Riviera, the Posillipo hill or Vomero, where Sorrentino was born.
I three: levels of the story mix continuously and the suggestions and references of the director's Pantheon flourish: the imprints of his "Fellinian" cinematographic culture are immediately evident with the first shot of the large chandelier ruined on the ground, then the fragments of family life in the "manner" of the Neapolitan comedy with lunch in the family villa and swimming in the sea with the beautiful Sorrentine goiter while in the background we hear the clamor of the San Paolo stadium (now Maradona) and finally the direct reference to the Maestro who must "go down to Naples" to select extras (a wonderful gallery of characters). Everything flows in a whirlwind of attractiveness that is not always poignant and which does not always do justice to the beauty of Naples as the director did with his film on Rome. The dialogues, the text, the screenplay rarely deserve to take notes and appear more like a simple caption that supports the characters than distinctive and characteristic elements of the film. It is no coincidence that the film ends with the aforementioned dialogue with the director Capuano who incites him to propose a story and Sorrentino tells what he can and perhaps must: his past, his city and his profession. He can't do more and maybe he doesn't want to.
We now come to the "film beyond the film" and propose some considerations. First of all, one that concerns the state of health of Italian cinema. In this glimpse of the season we have already seen three great protagonists such as Nanni Moretti, Carlo Verdone and now Paolo Sorrentino, grapple with their autobiography. One can always say that everything is fine: it is still an interesting "genre" but perhaps the great cinematographic show requires and deserves something more, something that could also be invention, creation, fantasy or the search for new languages, expressive rules and quant 'other, instead it is always forced to look back, to polish the family silverware which, however precious, is still dusty and locked away in drawers.
We have already written it other times: it is theeternal temptation to admire your navel, to bask in one's glorious and ancient past. When, on the other hand, Italian cinema tries to try its hand at a conventional genre that is as sure of success as the thriller (that is, a fake one like the recent 3/19 by Silvio Soldini) gets bogged down in a story without rhyme or reason. And yet, and this is a subsequent important consideration, never as in this moment is it confronted on the international scene not on the terrain of success in cinemas, with the public who pays the ticket, but on that of large-scale global distribution on streaming platforms, of Netflix specifically where It was the hand of God will be distributed starting December 15th. Do you know which is the most watched non-English Italian film in the world distributed by the web platform? Yara, directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, the chronicle of the dramatic story of the girl from Bergamo killed in 2010. We are talking about an "audience" of tens of millions of people around the world. This is a topic that deserves further study.
Finally, it is worth noting that the latest series of Gomorrah, another great "global" television and cinematographic success. Another Naples is told, with other characters, other photographs, other stories, another cinema. However, this film by Sorrentino is nominated for an Oscar and certainly worth the cost of admission.
